Live data from Hacker News

FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

fdic.gov

441–450 of 1001 posts

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#441

An explainer post [1] connected to that Tweet is something I found extremely informative (assuming it's accurate): "- In 2021 SVB saw a mass influx in deposits, which jumped from $61.76bn at the end of 2019 to $189.20bn at the end of 2021. - As deposits grew, SVB could not grow their loan book fast enough to generate the yield they wanted to see on this capital. As a result, they purchased a large amount (over $80bn!…

Why even chase 1.5%.

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#442
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is not a liquidity issue as long as SVB maintains their deposits, since these securities will pay out more than they cost eventually." But that's exactly the problem. With higher interest rates, those deposits will be looking for a higher deposit rate. With their assets tied up in low-paying long-term bonds, SVB will not be able to pay that higher rate. It would only work out "eventually", if the depositors wou…

He meant solvency issue. Someone else called this out downthread and he confirmed. Definitely felt like it should've been corrected more prominently, though.

And yet he is wrong!

They were stuck with assets earning And thus, "it's not a solvency issue as long as depositors are stupid and don't realize they can get more $$$ from other banks" ends up being quite misleading

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#443

An explainer post [1] connected to that Tweet is something I found extremely informative (assuming it's accurate): "- In 2021 SVB saw a mass influx in deposits, which jumped from $61.76bn at the end of 2019 to $189.20bn at the end of 2021. - As deposits grew, SVB could not grow their loan book fast enough to generate the yield they wanted to see on this capital. As a result, they purchased a large amount (over $80bn!…

Noob Questions: How do banks typically diversify their investments so that this kind of thing does not happen? Also don't they have to have some kind of liquidity cushion? Can't they just cover their short term costs by borrowing(I thought there is an overnight facility for lending between banks to borrow at low rates)

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#444
post #415

An explainer post [1] connected to that Tweet is something I found extremely informative (assuming it's accurate): "- In 2021 SVB saw a mass influx in deposits, which jumped from $61.76bn at the end of 2019 to $189.20bn at the end of 2021. - As deposits grew, SVB could not grow their loan book fast enough to generate the yield they wanted to see on this capital. As a result, they purchased a large amount (over $80bn!…

> 10+ year duration, with a weighted average yield of 1.56%. > the value of SVB’s MBS plummeted. How much 'plummeting' did they do in numerical terms? Something with those kinds of yields doesn't sound like it ought to be a super risky asset. The mortgage lending market tightened up a lot after the great recession...right?

They're very safe assets, they just have a long duration which makes them really risky if you could need them to cover deposits.

To make things more straightforward, let's just compress it to a 1-year time frame vs a 30-day bond. So a $100 MBS at 1.5% would pay you $101.50 if you held it for 1 year. If you have $100 in deposits and a $100 MBS bond, you're "solvent". But what happens if after 30 days, your depositor asks for his $100 back? You either need to sell your MBS or find other money to pay them.

If you try to sell the MBS to pay that $100 deposit liability and interest rates are about the same as they were when you bought it, you'd likely get around $100 and things are okay. If however, rates have spiked since then (like they have here), investors can either buy your bond that pays 1.5% or they can buy a new issuance 1-year bond paying 4% or 5%, or perhaps a 30-day bond paying 1.5%. So you need to give them a discount in order to sell your bond -- in this case it might be upwards of 30% or 40%.

So if you sell your MBS, you'll only get $60 or $70 for it -- leaving you a huge shortfall that you need to makeup from your other reserves. If you could convince your depositor to leave his money in the bank until that bond matures, you'd be completely fine -- but the timing mismatch and interest rate spike just kills the bank.

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#445

An explainer post [1] connected to that Tweet is something I found extremely informative (assuming it's accurate): "- In 2021 SVB saw a mass influx in deposits, which jumped from $61.76bn at the end of 2019 to $189.20bn at the end of 2021. - As deposits grew, SVB could not grow their loan book fast enough to generate the yield they wanted to see on this capital. As a result, they purchased a large amount (over $80bn!…

"97% of these MBS were 10+ year duration, with a weighted average yield of 1.56%."

I'd like to learn more about the dramatic drop in MBS - elsewhere, downthread, it is asserted that they have dropped 30-50% ?

I understand the inverse relationship between bond price and yield ...

... but I am surprised that an asset yielding ~1.5% drops 30% in value when treasuries of similar duration rise to 3-4%.

Are there other factors at play with MBS in early 2023 - such as increased delinquencies - that are putting downward pressure on their price ?

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#446
post #52

LMAO. Can't even believe how many people were confidently asserting that nothing was wrong yesterday. If you had more than $250k in SVB yesterday you probably just took a huge haircut. Hundreds of startups will become illiquid as a result of SVB's collapse, and there will be major layoffs here in the next 90 days as founders realize that they lost their funds and cannot raise in the current VC environment.

A good lesson for everyone who forgot the last cycle. Slowly, then all at once.

Do you think it's strange people are excited for the economy to fail?

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe's money is not there

Question being: if a meaningful portion of Stripes customers were to bank with SVB, and if SVB were to seize operating - would this effect Stripe? It’d be a Jedi move for Stripe to straight up acquire SVB. Imagine how strong of an offering they could create then.

Stripe doesn't have the assets to acquire SVB. As it is they're looking for funding to pay employees' stock tax bills.

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#448
post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10+ year duration, with a weighted average yield of 1.56%. > the value of SVB’s MBS plummeted. How much 'plummeting' did they do in numerical terms? Something with those kinds of yields doesn't sound like it ought to be a super risky asset. The mortgage lending market tightened up a lot after the great recession...right?

That has to be an inflation adjusted yield, right? Why would anyone do anything remotely risky for such terrible returns? You can almost find government bonds with similar average yields.

Nope! I got a 2.0% mortgage in 2021 (no points or anything) and the bank then turned around and sold it to Freddie who paid them 1.7% (so the bank made a nice 0.3% just for originating the loan).

Then Freddie packed my loan and sold it to others for something likely to be below 1.7%...

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#449
post #199

In my whole life, I have never seen a bank run from start to finish, but here we are. Interesting times!

A bank run powered by memes. We truly live in a world.

Bank runs are always caused by memes -- the change is bank runs powered by image macros, but memetic spread of the idea "this bank may fail" is always what causes a run.

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#450
post #161

I suspect all depositors will be made whole. The bank had a liquidity crisis; it had reserves in excess of its liabilities. Every bank borrows short term (you can walk up and withdraw your money at any time) but lends long (e.g. mortgages, though SVB writes few of those). The recent management grabbed some very long federal bonds; as rates have risen the resale value of those long term assets (paying a lower interest…

The thing that's strange is FDIC took control and setup a receiving bank for liquidation. That's not normal; FDIC works quite hard to find a bank willing to take over - usually they can work out what the "cost" is to take over, and FDIC pays the receiving bank that amount to "eat" the dying one. If they don't announce they have a bank to assume SVP by Monday, it's quite abnormal.

Exactly. The fact they didn't have a bank lined up points very heavily to the fact that they are not going to be made completely whole. In the past, the FDIC has found a buyer and as part of that process guarantees some amount of the losses. IE: Savior Bank buys Failed Bank for pennies on the dollar, or even for a negative amount. They get all deposits, insured or not, and all assets--meaning loans. Then, the FDIC guarantees they'll make Savior Bank whole some percentage of losses on assets that go bad. Sometimes 80% or more

This arrangement usually results in all depositors being made whole, and the FDIC fund not taking any, or many, actually losses, because most of the loans will still pay back, at least partially

They also do this before seizing the bank, so that it's all very orderly and calms any panics

SVB was looking for a buyer on the open market and that failed--no surprise

That the FDIC also could not find a buyer that they could subsidize and announce the same day as the seizure is very damning. I would be shocked if someone comes in later and tries to buy it

Also, the fact the seizure happened in the middle of the business day, and not at the close of business yesterday points to a somewhat disorderly and rapidly deteriorating condition. I think maybe the run picked up a lot faster than they expected

Post reply on HN